


river dolphins at five

by Ladyboo



Series: Darlin' and the Doctor [9]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-26
Updated: 2018-03-26
Packaged: 2019-04-08 05:27:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14098230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ladyboo/pseuds/Ladyboo
Summary: He didn't even want to get out of bed, not really.





	river dolphins at five

**Author's Note:**

  * For [saintsurvivor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/saintsurvivor/gifts).



> Gift fic! Of pure, tooth rotting sweet fluff! Enjoy! Uploaded via my phone, sorry❤

The room was warm, soft lit summer haze even though the sun hadn't even started to rise. The twilight, pre-dawn glimmer that danced across his skin and sent an echo through his veins, it was too early for this. An elbow in his ribs, legs tangled with his, he could taste the sour of his own breath, pursed his lips to contain his yawn even as he pressed a kiss to the sleep warm nape before him.

It took effort then, strength like he didn't want to have when the world was still dark like dreaming, but Len heaved himself out of bed without a sound or a shift of the mattress. 

Jim slept like the dead when he actually slept though, when he got so worn out and tired that he dropped, when he felt safe enough. A quiet kind of pleasure and Len paused at the sight of him, golden halo of hair and freckle kissed skin, loose limbed in how he had turned in the night, the way he had chased Len’s warmth and fit their bodies together in his sleep. He wanted to kiss the whorl of that cowlick near the top of his head, wanted to press his mouth to the knobs of Jim’s spine where they stood in stark relief against the rest of his skin.

He kept his hands to himself though, kept his mouth to himself and instead stumbled from the siren song of their bed to the bathroom on slumber aching feet. 

Enough time to take his morning routine, to brush his teeth and wash his face and flush the toilet, and yet, the sun hadn’t risen yet. Neither had Jim moved, a steady rise and fall to his chest and the heather grey sheet slung low across his hips. Like he hadn’t noticed Len had left him, like he hadn’t noticed the slight empty to the bed. 

He drew close, pressed his hand to the mattress with his weight just to watch it dip down low, and he moved then. Rolled in his sleep with a soft vulnerability cast across his loose lips, and it was only at the touch of a wide hand sweeping up his spine that his lashes fluttered, that his nose scrunched.

“Hey baby, up time.”

A groan, quiet for all that his breathing was small, and Jim stared at him with bleary eyes from beneath sunshine lashes. A slow blink, a smack of his lips, and he reached out, caught the hand that hadn’t rooted to the mattress and brought it to his mouth for a kiss. Plush lips, the soft drag of skin against his, and for all that it blocked out the lower half of his face, he was beautiful. Freckled cheeks and a soft look in his eyes, the way he looked, the way he stared-

“No.”

“Brat, c’mon.”

It was impossible, surely, to not be in love.

He caught him by the wrist, twisted his own fingers around till they were palm to palm and pulled Jim up, lifted until the slighter of the two sat upright, bare chested in the twilight glow of the morning. Jim went though, easy for Len like he never was for anything else in his life, and he nearly had a lapful of sunshine and starlight for how Jim leaned against him. He pulled back then, he got to his feet then with Jim’s hand still in his, moved them until the other had no choice but to get up lest he break the connection.

Sure enough, bare feet took purchase between his, cold skin against the delicate of his arches, and cold fingers wormed under his shirt, took to ground in the grooves between his ribs. Laughter, soft and sleep thick and pressed into his throat at the way that he flinched, but he held the younger close, nose against hair that smelled like day old shampoo and fresh air. They swayed like that, wrapped around one another in the before dawn quiet, and he pressed a kiss to his temple, felt him sigh.

“Meet me downstairs in five.”

A whine, dissatisfied and put out, but Len just pressed a kiss to his temple before he left Jim standing by the bed.

Five minutes then to try and get his tired hands to figure out a coffee pot that he hadn’t touched since he was seventeen and hadn’t figured out how to manage his own beard. Three minutes until he gave up, until coffee would have to wait until he could convince Jim into actual clothes and they could just go to the diner up the street to get something to drink and something to eat, he only succeeded in needing to pull off his own shirt where he sloshed day old coffee onto himself. Another two minutes before Jim came stumbling down the stairs with a pair of gym shorts slung low against the sharp crest of his hips. 

Len wanted to sink his teeth there, wanted to taste the beating of Jim’s pulse beneath his lips as he drew bruise heavy fingertips across his skin. 

He kissed him instead, in the quiet of his Mama’s kitchen at four-forty in the morning while she still slept in her room. His sisters wouldn’t be here for a few more hours yet, his Mama wouldn’t rise for another two hours at the least, and they were as alone as they were going to be, with the walls made of windows and the nearest neighbor through the treeline to the west. He kissed him like he hadn’t in hours, like he wouldn’t get to for days, reverent and breathless with how he cupped Jim’s throat in a tender hand.

Jim leaned into him, hands curling at his shoulders, blunt nails catching on his collarbones where there was no shirt for him to grasp. Mouth soft against his, they shared a breath just like they shared a heartbeat, Len only pulled away because he had to, because he needed to.

“We need to get outside, darlin’.”

Jim sighed, but there was a smile on his wide mouth and that same soft in his eyes, and Len swept his thumb across the arch of his throat.

“Okay.”

Hand in his like Jim didn’t even think to hesitate, they hit the back deck on quiet feet with the screen door rattling behind them. Down the stairs then, onto the lawn, Len pulled him past the magnolia trees that swayed in the morning breeze. Bitter marsh salt on the air, the near sulfur where it kissed the ocean water two miles down and turned into nothing but wide, bottomless blue, he took a deep breath as he pulled them up onto the dock.

Too close though, they were going to cut it too close, and Jim let out a bark of laughter as Len jerked them suddenly into a run. Barefoot on sunbleached boards, weather worn smooth, low tide with hundreds of fiddler crabs clicking about in the exposed marsh silt. They didn’t stumble though, not once despite the way the air was still near dark or how the dock wasnt even in places. They ran to the dock house at the end, the floating platform with a roof fitted over it rocking quiet and creaking as the tide lapped at the support beams. 

He pulled them to the edge, got them to where they would have tumbled over had Jim not stopped running when he did, and he pulled him down to sit. Down so that they were shoulder to shoulder on the creaking, swaying dock, so their feet were hanging over the edge with their fingers still tangled. Jim didn't even pant for breath though, the bastard that he was, but Len smiled, and pressed another kiss to his head.

“Why are we out here? The sun hasn't even come up, Bones, we’re supposed to be on  _ vacation _ .”

“Shut up, Jim.”

Like he was a child, but Jim leaned over, Jim pressed his smile into Len’s shoulder like it was a secret between them. Like it was something to be kept and treasured and held, but Len didn’t question him. He just squeezed Jim’s hand in his and watch as the world went still around them.

As the sun crested over the edge of the water, as the world turned gold edged and hazy and bright. Burnish gold and crimson violet, bleeding orange and indigo and pink across the water until the river turned into diamonds. Glittering, brilliant and bright and galaxy contained, he felt the way that Jim’s fingers pressed bruises to the spaces in between his. Jim burrowed close, held on and twisted them around so that Len’s arm went over his shoulders, so their hands still held across Jim’s chest to lock him in tight and snug. 

“Did you drag us out here just because you wanted to show me a sunrise?”

“I  _ wanted _ to show you the river dolphins.”

Laughter, pressed against his chest, Jim’s mouth to his collarbone until he could feel the imprint of his lips like a brand to his skin. Cotton candy kisses and a gossamer smile, Jim was starlight in his arms, barely contained but loved eternally.  

“Fucking romantic.” Soft spoken words for all that he no doubt intended to sound teasing, and he could feel the way Jim had gone lax against him, body loose and warm. Bare chested against one another, the Georgia heat had started to set in, the steam had started to rise on the water, and Len couldn’t think of anywhere he would rather be at five in the morning. “You know I already agreed to marry you, right?”

He pressed another kiss to the top of Jim’s head then, slow and sweet like he did whenever given the chance, and he could see it. The gold gleamed in the morning light, alive with the fiery colors of the sun on the water as it crawled up from the horizon, and he hoped he never lost that breathless, tight feeling in his chest.

“Yeah darlin’, I know.”


End file.
